As much as I love Google (not even a little, my love for that company is negative and becoming more negative per second) I would love to run far far away from it. Here’s another ball and chain I need to break.
Where can I find a simple parental control access system for my phone and or computer that I allow my kids to use?
You must log in or # to comment.
There are parental controls, but it’s rare. FOSS projects usually aren’t very keen on building systems of authority, even parental ones.
For smartphones check out /e/OS (Murena Smartphones). They added parental controls recently, not sure how good those are though.
For computers your best bet’s probably a Linux with Gnome. They also added something recently.
You might be able to combine both with a custom DNS service, surely there’s something out there for that usecase (NextDNS?). But that’s already getting pretty complex.
Not a perfect solution, but I use NextDNS which has profiles, and can set allowed services and times of day for them, Online Games, Video Streaming etc. This is set in the phone’s DNS setting so works via WiFi or cellular.
I’ve started to use the excellent DNS Toggle on my phone to quickly enable/disable it for the really annoying sites that block ad blockers etc.
In terms of app control itself, I still use Family Link begrudgingly as well like you for Android phones. I access it via the web page which thankfully still works so I don’t have to have the Google app installed.
depending on your router, couldn’t you do this at that level? a combination of public dns (dns4eu) or adguard filter lists? you could create two wifi networks, one controlled one not; most routers let you block whole services too like tiktok, etc
dns4eu
Use Mullvad DNS instead, it’s a very blatant honeypot.
Mullvad’s CEO finances fascists, please don’t.
Aren’t they going to shutdown their DNS and use someone’s else’s?
That only prevents phone connectivity over WiFi. Turning off WiFi and using mobile data bypasses it. Using offline applications and games (or even Plex/Jellyfin etc) can bypass it too.
Family link does more than stop internet access at certain times, it allows setting usage limits by device and by app.
what type of phone/OS are your phone and computer?
there’s some hands-on controls too that may be useful but it starts with just giving them their own profile or login that’s ideally with as few permissions as possible. For android, there’s profiles which you may be able to lock down a bit more than your own profile. Apple had family mode settings that you may be able to turn on and off when they have the device. For a computer, same approach. Standard user account with whatever you installed using an admin account and lock down content via DNS like cloudflare for families, https://adguard-dns.io/public-dns.html, a self hosted one or something like https://nextdns.io/.
Its Android
It’s called MDM. Unfortunately most companies try to limit their MDM solutions to enterprises, but FleetDM is an okay choice.
Overkill, otherwise there’s parental controls built-in to iOS/Android
Yeah it’s called FamilyLink and works over Google servers.
There are on-device controls, built-in to the OS
Yeah that looks though.
What is it?
Parental Controls
Nothing really exists.
The likely extreme thing I did was setup ManageEngine’s MDM+ (free for<25 users) and put my sons phone on a “device profile” which locks it down. It’s decently intuitive, but does require a “server” so there’s a bit of setup too. I use YT at work too so for me it was done in 30 minutes.
For your computer: https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/parental-controls.html.en
For the Phone I’d create a second profile on the phone and only install the apps there which I’d allow my children to use.
